Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  “Humor me one more moment,” Bentley said. “Mr. Williams, is it possible that your friend Temperance, the one who is currently in possession of an artifact worth in excess of a million dollars, isn’t a magician at all? Is it possible your daughter was, in fact, kidnapped solely for the purpose of a third party acquiring that amulet?”

  I added in, refreshing the bluffing spell as I did, “You’ll want to consider this possibility quite seriously, Mr. Williams.”

  Williams blinked and said, haltingly, “The amulet? Not a magician?” He gave Krinkle a puzzled look. “What they’re saying, is it possible?”

  She held out two open hands. “Louis, does it really matter who kidnapped whom? The amulet is back where it belongs, with a member of my family. Your daughter is safe, I promise. She’s probably quite hungry by now, and probably cold, considering where she is, but she’ll understand.” Krinkle caressed the amber jewel on her chest with one wrinkled hand. “Everyone will understand soon. And I promise to send all of you postcards.”

  Bentley and I exchanged a look.

  Krinkle was no psychic or magician. But she was behind the whole thing. Even if she’d been a pawn for Cole Dexter, or Codex, or some other party, she was guilty of participating in the kidnapping.

  Of the four people in the attic, three of us had been played for fools.

  There was a moaning sound. We jerked our heads to see what was happening now. Krinkle’s mouth was moving. She wasn’t moaning, exactly. She was reciting an incantation.

  It was in an ancient version of Witch Tongue, and I was only able to catch every third word, but the words I did catch were alarming.

  “Stop that right now,” I said to the old woman. “Don’t you dare cast that spell, Mrs. Krinkle. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t understand what you’re saying. I can tell by your pronunciation.”

  She ignored me and kept uttering the ancient language in a low moan. She was mangling most of the words, but if I could understand the gist of it, there was a chance the magic would work.

  “You’re not a magician,” I said.

  She paused the incantation long enough to say, “Not yet.” She smiled and went back to muttering the ancient, powerful words. Her pronunciation was improving by the second. I caught more words, and the weight in my stomach got heavier. The spell was for resurrection.

  Bentley asked me in a whisper, “What’s going on?”

  “A resurrection spell,” I said to him quietly. Then, louder, I said, “It’s a resurrection spell, for summoning an ancient powerful being.”

  Krinkle continued, undeterred.

  “Temperance, that spell is not for teleportation,” I said. “Someone’s tricking you, just like you tricked your friend Louis, and the entire Wisteria Police Department.”

  She kept casting.

  I yelled, “You’re summoning an ancient demon, Mrs. Krinkle! You are offering yourself as a flesh and blood sacrifice!”

  Williams stared at me, eyes wide, then turned to the detective. “Is she right? I told Temperance that teleporting from place to place sounded too good to be true. I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my days, but even I had a hard time believing that.”

  Bentley turned and squinted at me. Was it true?

  “I’m not bluffing,” I told him. “It’s the truth. She’s casting a powerful spell to bring something up from...” I listened a moment. “From the Deep.”

  Bentley drew in a breath, then said to Williams, “Zara Riddle is the most powerful witch I’ve ever met. She knows every kind of spell in existence, and all the witch languages, even the ancient ones.” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “If she says that a spell is for summoning an ancient being, then that’s what it does.”

  Bentley glanced over at me for approval. I gave him half a shrug. He’d laid it on a bit thick, but I was sure about the spell. Eighty percent sure. Or at least forty-five percent sure.

  Williams went to Krinkle, who was seated in the chair, and reached for her arm. A bubble of light flashed around Krinkle and the chair, and Williams screamed. He staggered back, let out a sorrowful noise, and collapsed on the floor.

  Bentley and I exchanged a look.

  “Did you see that?” Bentley asked. “There’s some sort of shield around her.”

  “I saw it,” I said. “Don’t get too close, and don’t try to grab her while she’s in that chair, wearing that amulet.”

  “What can we do?”

  “You’re the cop. What would a cop do?”

  “Arrest her on suspicion of kidnapping.”

  “Let’s try that. Hurry, before she gets through it again with the right pronunciation.”

  Bentley stood in front of Krinkle, staying back from her protective bubble, which was now shimmering.

  “Ma’am, I am placing you under arrest,” Bentley said loudly. “Do you hear me? Stop what you’re doing and put your hands on top of your head where I can see them.”

  She continued reciting the spell, her hands on either side of the amulet, her fingers touching the gemstone.

  My sense of direction suddenly shifted. Up felt like down and down was up.

  My body felt less solid than usual, as though I’d had a buoyancy spell cast on me, yet I had cast nothing of the sort. My hair flipped around, as though caught by a breeze.

  It was a magic breeze. Power was flowing through the attic, passing through me, gathering and funneling toward Krinkle in her iron chair.

  A rope of magic tickled my half-bare shoulder. It was a stream of witch power—Margaret Mills’ power, specifically—arcing through, just missing my ear. Margaret’s tough-skinned magic snaked into the amulet on Krinkle’s neck, like lightning being trapped in a bottle.

  Mangled pronunciation or not, the spell was getting stronger. If my interpretation was correct, an ancient being was heading our way. A powerful one.

  Since Krinkle wouldn’t listen to reason and stop the spell, I had to do something.

  I didn’t dare reach for her and get a shock, but I could poke through her protective bubble in other ways.

  Standing my ground at a safe distance, I grabbed for the amulet using magic.

  Nothing.

  My telekinetic power wouldn’t even budge the necklace, let alone lift it off over Krinkle’s head.

  I heard Aunt Zinnia in my head: Never use magic when regular means will work.

  I strode toward the iron chair and the old woman, both of which were radiating with power, bright enough that it gave the crumpled body of Louis Williams a pale blue glow.

  The amulet was right in front of me, only a few feet away. If I could get that amulet from the old woman, all of this would stop. And then I would have the amulet.

  I glanced over at the crumpled form of Louis Williams. Most people would view the man’s failure as a warning to not try the same thing.

  But most people were not Zara Riddle.

  Williams couldn’t reach through the chair’s barrier, but he was a mere human. He didn’t have my powers.

  As I extended my hand toward the amulet, Bentley yelled out, “Wait!”

  Who wants to wait?

  My fingers crossed the glowing boundary.

  “Zara, wai—”

  But I didn’t wait.

  And then, I immediately regretted not waiting.

  Chapter 30

  I probably shouldn’t have stuck my hands through Krinkle’s magic bubble of protection, but they say hindsight is 20/20.

  What followed was a pain that some might describe as being like nothing they’d ever felt before, except that wasn’t true in my case.

  The blast from Krinkle’s protective bubble felt an awful lot like the shock I’d gotten from Vincent Wick’s bumper. That time, at least my aunt had been on the scene to cast a spell to keep my body alive and my blood circulating. She had also unwittingly invited a certain ether-trapped genie to animate me for a while. Fun times!

  Back to my most recent experience with a soul-wrenching shocke
r:

  There I was, the life being shocked out of me. My aunt wasn’t around to keep me animated, so I had no choice but to hold on.

  Hold on, I instructed myself, along with approximately one million curse words.

  Easier said than done. It’s hard to hold on when every cell in your body is screaming to let go and float away into the darkness.

  The world swam around me. I felt like water draining from a tub. The temptation to let go was powerful, but I grabbed that pain like it was a rope, and I held on. I held on like this experience was something I wanted. I held on like it was the grab bar on a roller coaster.

  The pain solidified and then shifted, moving downward. It became the pain of childbirth.

  The world swam and swirled, and I was pulled through time, through my memories.

  I smelled stale booze and cigarettes. I was sweating, and the backs of my arms were sticking to the least clean upholstery in existence—the back seat of a taxi. I looked between my bare knees to see the face of a panicked but kind taxi driver assisting.

  “One more push,” he was saying, and then there was more pain, but it wasn’t so bad. And then my baby girl was in my arms.

  People were knocking on the windows. Help was on the way. “Good,” I said, to no one in particular. “We need help with this one. Send backup. There’s a man here, too. He’s been hurt, and I don’t even know if he’s alive.”

  The taxi driver stared at me. “Miss, you’re not making any sense.”

  The wet baby squirmed in my arms, and then she slipped right through, falling away.

  The pain shifted, and I was somewhere else.

  I stood in my kitchen. It was early evening, and my belly was full of good wine and food, but something wasn’t right. An old woman stood beside me. Krinkle? Except it wasn’t. It was Winona Vander Zalm, wearing an elegant black cocktail dress, holding a drink in one hand and a long cigarette in the other.

  “Please don’t electrocute yourself,” Vander Zalm was saying. “There’s so much more we spirits need you for.”

  We weren’t alone. Two of my family members were in the kitchen, talking about me.

  Someone asked, “Is she drunk?” It was my aunt, Zinnia.

  My daughter answered. “She might be sleep-toasting. It’s her version of sleepwalking. She’s been getting up in the middle of the night and making toast. Six nights in a row now. It’s very strange.”

  “Six nights?” My aunt sounded horrified.

  They continued talking. I knew this routine. I’d heard it before.

  My daughter tugged on my arm. “Mom! Stop being so weird! What are you doing?”

  What was I doing? Just making toast.

  I was making toast, even though there was somewhere else I needed to be. An attic. There was a woman there, in a chair. And there was an amulet, but first I had to show my daughter something. I would show her the modifications that had been made to the toaster, and then I would ask her to call the police and send backup to the Krinkle residence. And the other house, too. Time slipped around me. Which house? The Pressman house. The one full of scorpions and blackness, where the genie would leave my body and infect another one.

  I wanted tell my daughter and my aunt everything, but my mouth wasn’t under my control.

  But that didn’t matter. My mouth wouldn’t work, because this wasn’t happening right now. These events were already done, already finished, permanent, set in time. You can’t change time once it’s past. Can you?

  Time slowed, stretching out, and I became aware of how crowded the kitchen was. My aunt and my daughter were talking about witchcraft. The elegantly-dressed spirit of Winona Vander Zalm stood to my right, unseen by the others. But also there was another entity. One that wanted to stop me.

  It was old, and powerful, and standing just out of sight, to my left. If only I could turn my head, I could see. I could see... her.

  Vander Zalm shook the ghost ice in her ghost glass. “Zara, I’ve been trying to tell you about the toaster, but now you’ve taken it too far,” she said. “Whatever it is you’re doing now with that sink full of water, it’s not my idea, darling.”

  Then whose idea was it?

  She pointed her finger in the direction of the one I couldn’t see. At her. At the divine being.

  Who was the most powerful being I knew? Chessa.

  But this wasn’t her. This being didn’t have her energy signature, her particular brand of serpentine energy. And besides, Chessa was lying helpless in a coma at that moment, only just beginning to make contact with me.

  I opened my mouth to ask Vander Zalm who it was, who she was, but then my arms jerked.

  And... I plunged the red-hot toaster into the water.

  As one does.

  Zoey and Zinnia freaked out, exactly like I knew they would. This had all happened before, and something told me—maybe it was the divine being, or maybe it was the pain—that all these events would keep happening, over and over, until we got it right.

  More pain, and more spinning out of control.

  Then I was standing still, which felt disorienting after the spinning. I was outside, under the trees and nature, only I wasn’t there to appreciate the weather. I was getting closer to Vincent Wick’s van, leaning in, trying to eavesdrop. Oh, Zara, I thought. Why can’t you be a good witch and mind your own business?

  Too late. I was so close to the van. Inside, someone was watching, and he pressed a button to send me the message. I got the shock of my life.

  Make that the shock of my death.

  The first one, anyway.

  As I spiraled through time and nothingness, Chessa’s life flashed into mine, mashing my memories with hers. I felt her love, and her despair. She was powerless. The most powerful woman, defanged.

  Then I was in the forest, with a giant bird with sharp talons bearing down on me, and then I was below ground in a hospital bed, drugged and woozy, my powers dampened, and then I was being tossed into the water like garbage. Only to wash up on shore and be taken again, taken back to the people I’d tried to escape.

  Chessa’s ancient rage roared and then subsided, and the pain returned. But it was burning this time. I was drowning in acid, being digested.

  And then I was being pulled free, rescued by my daughter.

  Zoey! I tried to hold on to the sight of her. She was growing up too fast, a newborn a moment ago and now nearly a woman. I tried to hold on, but I couldn’t hold on. I couldn’t stop time.

  My heart. Something was wrong. It was racing, about to explode, and then... Charlize. The wise-cracking supernatural being who’d adopted me as a sister. I felt her gorgon touch, and it brought relief. She turned my racing heart to stone, and then she brought me back.

  Charlize, I thought, and her name was like a beacon, keeping me safe from the rocky shores. We’d had our differences, but she was my friend. And she would have been there in the attic to help this time, if only I’d waited for backup.

  Charlize would give me such a hard time about not waiting! About hogging all the fun adventures for myself. Assuming I survived. Which I had to do.

  I felt a thread of something. An object-location spell. I had the tiny doll in my purse, and I was still connected. As I thought of my purse, the connection grew a twin. My purse! I was always losing it, or it was always losing me, but we would always find the way back.

  I used that thread to pull myself back to the present, back to the attic. I was in my body again, in the present.

  It was so hot, so stuffy. Was that the smell of meat burning?

  My hands. They were still embedded in the glow.

  I pulled them back, away from the spell.

  The pain stopped. I realized—too late—that the pain had been holding me up. My legs went out beneath me. I crashed to the floor like an old leather satchel full of dice.

  Everything went dark, but I was still there. Still in that time, that place, that attic. I could feel the floor underneath my cheek.

  I felt hearts bea
ting. Four of them. One was very weak. Louis Williams’ heart. One was very strong, much stronger than mine.

  Chapter 31

  CHARLIZE WAKEFUL

  DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND MAGIC

  ARCHIVES

  After ten minutes of Chet’s lunatic behavior, Charlize finally turned the apoplectic shifter into a granite statue of himself. For his own good.

  Then Charlize began questioning Codex about her recent activities.

  Luckily, Codex was in a chatty mood.

  They talked about philosophy, and about Codex’s recent “enlightenment.” Charlize didn’t argue over whether or not an artificial intelligence could have religious faith, let alone become enlightened. That was the sort of big topic they didn’t have time for right now, not while the number of hours on a missing persons case was ticking upwards.

  Charlize steered the conversation to how the enlightenment—assuming it was enlightenment, and not, as Charlize suspected, a bug in the AI’s code—had inspired Codex to bring back an ancient powerful being.

  And who was this ancient powerful being?

  “Mahra,” the AI said with reverence.

  Her name was Mahra. No last name. She’d existed before last names were even a thing.

  Mahra was, as legend had it, one of the Four Eves. These were the original woman who, with the assistance of a man named Adam, gave birth to all of humanity.

  Though all Four Eves were mothers, Mahra was the one called Mother with a capital M. She was also called Destroyer with a capital D. And she was both of these things equally. If one of her children misbehaved, Mahra was the one to extract punishment. If she deemed it a mistake to have brought one of these children into the world, she saw it as her duty to take that child back out of existence. She did the same for the children of the other three Eves, because they didn’t have the guts.

  Charlize was reeling from the idea of such a creature being loosed upon the world in modern times, but she had to stick to the task at hand. The missing persons case.